Recruitable Mage Rebalance - seeking comments

[Graeme Dice]

TheSelfishGene said:
So Wrathful skies is fair?

It's definetly powerful. It can also be defended against if you plan for it.

I've beaten Wrathful Sky casters in a multiplayer game (an Air Queen), but it cost me my whole army of devils (which are hardly weak units themselves).

Did you not have any rings of tamed lightning?

Utterdark is fair? Its the big red WIN GAME button.

If someone casts Utterdark, they had better have put a huge number of death gems into it, or else it's going to only last a turn. That huge number of death gems could have been used in any number of other ways.

False Horror is fair? Wow, its -10 fatigue and 1 path;

It also is only useful as a delaying tactic to keep the air mages from being overrun by high MR, lightning immune commanders.

dragonflies take -100 fatigue and 1 nature gem.

Dragonflies are nature magic, which has useful summons, unlike air magic.

Vine Ogres are fair?

They are more than fair. They are cannon fodder that can't stand up to anything approaching serious opposition.

I mean they cost the same as Vine Men, how could you even defend them?

They require a nature 3 mage to spend an entire turn. That's not quite the same cost as vine men.

(aside from being almost the only Nature thing worth a flip in Multi).

Lamia's are certainly a better use of your gems than vine ogres. They actually have a chance to defeat fully equipped SCs, unlike vine ogres, which perform worse than barbarians.

5 gems for a Scorpion is fine; 10 gems for a Undead, 20 armor, 42hp, Bane Blade thug is NOT fine.

That it has a bane blade is immaterial because a bane blade is not really a useful weapon. A unit with 42 hp and 20 armour will only survive a single turn against 20 or so units with the ability to achieve more than 20 damage. (Barbarians and all other two-handed weapon wielders.)

Its not that the previous summons is bad, its that things like the Banelord are simply too good.

A banelord is nothing special unless you spend three times his summoning cost on equipment. At that point, he can still be killed by elite national troops if you set him up to defend against elemental magic and cover his lousy MR, or by magic if you set him up to not be defeated (easily) by elite units.

Please take into context this thread's purpose: to rebalance mages.

Mages are already almost too expensive in most cases, so they really don't need to be made even more so.

You can change balance more towards summons or more towards conventional troops - common knowledge is that, basically, all conventional troops are crap, its only a matter of time when.

It's unfortunate that "common knowledge" doesn't match up with "actual gameplay".

Because everyone wants to spam temples and castles, that 'when' is pretty damn soon after the start of the game.

If you define turn 40-60 as "pretty soon", then yes, it is pretty soon.

I ban WISH, you spam GHOST RIDERS, or whatever.

If you can't defend against ghost rider attacks, then you've probably spent most of the game turtling and avoiding confrontation, and have already lost the expansion race before turn 20. All the high-level spells do is bring the game to a conclusion before turn 150.

[tinkthank]

Cherry, I think your idea is noble, but am not sure it would be "worth it" in terms of the hours and hours you will need for testing, because "very difficult research" and a few spell mods will accomplish a similar effect. Balance mods such as this are extremely complex (doh!), since you will have to contextualize the increase of price for individual nations in comparison with the strengths and roles the mages play between the nations.

That being said: looks nice!
I would prefer fewer changes to a few mages. I particularly welcome a small price increase in the Caelan mage.
I think a thematically sensible change (which I have tested and liked) is to make the New Era Pan 2E2N1? (that is, in the New Age, the Pan's Nature skills have decreased due to their increased love of steel), but they keep a random.

Good luck!

[Scott Hebert]

Endoperez found my original work on over/undercosted mages,Cherry. I'll forward you the relevant information.

Regarding 'overcosted mages', I think the problem is more that the 'good mages' (those that people think are costed appropriately) are in fact under-costed by quite a degree, and the rest are more or less evenly priced.

If mages were not summonable, I think that would help.

We'll see.

[The_Tauren13]

Scott Hebert said:
If mages were not summonable, I think that would help.

Wouldnt that annihilate some themes like Ulm and Carrion Woods beyond all repair?

[Saber Cherry]

The_Tauren13 said:

Wouldnt that annihilate some themes like Ulm and Carrion Woods beyond all repair?

Yes. Alternately, living summonable mages could cost upkeep. When it makes sense, of course - nobody is going to expect a GoR'd Vastness to want (or be able to use) money, and neither will a fallen angel demand compensation upon being freed from eternal suffering.

Maybe some summonables should have disadvantages? I wouldn't want to live in a town being patrolled by Anthrax, the King of Banefires... and I would avoid the public library if he was hanging out there doing research in level-8 death evocations. Being forced to keep these guys on the move (and some of more vile blood and death summonable mages) because you don't want them polluting your territory (like with Demon Lords) might be interesting.

Also, it would be neat if some creatures like Hama Dryads, Fairy Queens, and Arch Angels attracted people to provinces, opposite to the way Harvesters of Sorrows repel / kill them, providing incentive to keep certain mages at home rather than in battle. If I, a lowly peasant, had my family killed by the Lord of Plague Wind that my God was keeping in my hometown for his own inscrutable reasons... and I heard that the province next door had a fairy queen curing blindess and disease... I'd probably move.


But that's all out of the scope of this mod. Anyway, thanks for the suggestions above. It's starting to seem that Dominions II is complex enough that you have to balance some units more by "feel" than by equations, so post your thoughts on other mages that feel too expensive, too cheap, or too useless.

And please try not to attack other people, no matter how poorly-thought-out or poorly-phrased their post might be. Discussion and disagreements are fine, but people tend to avoid posting their thoughts in threads where criticism is too sharp.

[Scott Hebert]

Well, national summonable mages shouldn't go away.

It's just that certain summonable mages, at the very least, are very undercosted, if they should be allowed at all. Spectres and Lamia Queens spring immediately to mind.

Any non-national mage that can summon itself is also immediately suspect.